So basically backing me into a logic trap. If the SCOTUS rules that something is constitutional then even if I have fewer rights because of it I haven’t lost anything because in the court’s view I never had the right in the first place and they are just pointing it out.
I would say the Patriot Act clearly steps on constitutional grounds as already cited. Until the SCOTUS rules one way or another I am subject to those rules and they diminish my rights.
Still…I’ll try and meet your measure:
Board of Education of Pottawatomie County v. Earls: Students can be drug tested to participate in extra-curricular activities.
Hudson v. Michigan: Evidence improperly collected in “no-knock” searches could still be used at trial (exclusionary rule does not apply).
John Doe #1 v. Reed: The government can disclose names of voters who signed a referendum.
Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission: Struck down parts of the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act.
New London v. Kelo: Cities can take private property and turn it over to developers.
They can’t arrest your leaders if you don’t have any. And you can’t be misled if you don’t follow. Sometimes experiments don’t work. Mostly, it would seem. But the experiments that don’t work lead the way to the experiment that does work.
Of course, rape is not in any way related to the ideology of Occupy. If anything, progressives have called for restrictions on rape such as preventing spouses from perpetrating rape. If a significant emergent message of Occupy were re-examining consent laws, this would be pertinent, otherwise it’s just poisoning the well (there are criminals at occupy, thus any legal tactics, however dubious, should be used to oppose them).
As far as I’m aware defecating near a police car is not illegal and is thus completely morally sanctioned.
BUt that’s my point – they aren’t. The Patriot Act didn’t really change the rights available to you. You NEVER HAD THOSE RIGHTS.
Your four areas were: Records searches, searches without notice, intelligence searches, and trap and trace searches.
I think I have disposed of trap and trace searches. The government has always been able to target a phone number, not a location. What’s changed is technology; now a phone number can reach you anywhere in the country.
Searches without notice – again, you never had this right. See US v. Villegas, 899 F. 2d 1324 (2nd Circuit 1990):
That was in 1990. There are similar holdings in other federal circuits.
So well before the Patriot Act, you didn’t have the right to contemporaneous notice of a search of your premises.
Now the library records. Once again, you never had a right to prevent a third party from disclosing your records. I agree that there is one area that could be fairly described as infringing a right that existed before the Patriot Act passed: the “gag order” provision prevents a custodian from disclosing to you that it has supplied your records to the government, effective for a year. So I suppose you could say if you’re a custodian of someone else’s records, you no longer have the right to disclose to those third parties that the government asked you to disclose their records pursuant to a lawful subpoena.
But the government has always had the right to execute that subpoena.
Ah, good,** Bricker** Carrying the conversation into sophistic legality, where you are most comfortable, is much an improvement over slandering people you don’t know and wouldn’t begin to understand.
Okay… but the woman is speaking as a representative of OWS. I personally saw this woman, with a guy, interviewed around this time as well on a couple of networks. As they were spokespersoning, they denied that they were spokespeople but had been elected to represent the group (but NOT serve as spokespeople!). I wish I could find it because the semantic gymnastics were entertaining. It gets tedious though, not being able to call a duck a duck.
Anyway, here’s another link regarding yet another non-existent spokesperson who got fired not spokespersoning for OWS:
Well, the ACLU would seem to disagree with you. Of course it takes the Supreme court to rule on this but clearly people also with legal training think the Patriot Act runs afoul of the constitution in ways that did not exist prior to the Patriot Act.
This is all off topic to this thread anyway. I have answered you as best I can and feel I am in good company for my assertion (unless you want to argue that ACLU lawyers are pulling it all out their ass to begin with and are legal know-nothings). I think it is safe to say they are basing their opinion on actual legal reasoning. I (and they) may be wrong of course. Only time will tell (if ever).
The tangent is bringing up crimes committed at OWS as if it is meaningful.
Of course the crime of rape and murder are horrible. Thing is the crimes are not inherent to OWS nor is OWS in any way “ok” with such things happening.
It’d be akin to someone committing a crime at a football game and then suggesting that the people who attend football games are all tarnished by that happening.
No, what I asked for was support for your slanderous insinuations that OWS was somehow responsible, What you handed back is a tissue of maybes and could bes. Which is proof enough for you. Which means, by the same token, that the Republican Party is responsible for all prostitution related problems in downtown St. Paul during their convention, yes?
I haven’t checked with their spokesrectum, but I’m pretty sure they’ll deny that. As well they might.
It’s your trap. You set it when you talked about taking rights away. If that’s true, then a legal challenge should be possible, and a ruling from SCOTUS should be obtainable. Are we even in the ballpark of that happening yet?
First, I’d appreciate it if you could point out where I made any such assertion, slanderous or not. I did no such thing. And I didn’t say maybe or could be, not once.
Second, you asked me to “Prove it. Names, dates, places.” I did.
Finally, as the cites make clear, none of these crimes simply occurred while the circus was in town - they were part of the show.
It’s true that the goals of OWS don’t involve rape.
But when you plan a protest that involves dozens of people keeping law enforcement at bay and sleeping in tents, I would say it’s essentially inevitable that it will happen.
I don’t accuse OWS of sanctioning rape. I accuse them of being too stupidly starry-eyed and idealistic to understand what they were doing.
Plus:
If a rape occurs at a footbal game you can be damn sure that the governing authority is going to be held responsible. Of course, the convenience of having no governing authority as a premise precludes responsibility.
The destruction of property and the disruption of commerce and the imposition and cost that has resulted from OWS is where it gets icky. Every time something happens, e.g somebody tries to blow up a bridge, nobody knows nuttin – the were on the fringe. Well when the whole thing is fringe, then the whole should take some responsibility.
So while all the “no leader” stuff looks to many to be quaintly moronic and harmless, it also permits crimes to be planned and committed without tarnishing “the movement”. Oh those darn Anarchists, we just can’t control’em.
The Supreme Court of the US has jurisdiction over the constitutionally protected rights of citizens (the tenth amendment deals with powers). Congress may grant or restrict other rights at whim (though there may be consequences to violating rights granted by treaties to which the US is a signatory).
So, if some gun nut who is an NRA member goes and kills someone the NRA should be held to account?
How many OWS protestors are there nationwide? Tens of thousands? Hundreds of thousands? Hanging in there for months straight? How many rapes were there? Murders? How does that compare to the rates in society as a whole?
Unless you can show OWS is an out of control monster waiting to run amok raping and pillaging all you are doing is engaging in slander. If one NRA nut kills someone then, by your standards, we should slander the NRA as a whole because obviously they are not taking responsibility for their members.
As for blowing up a bridge you got nothing. So some loons wanted to blow up a bridge and claim association with lefty ideals. There are people with right wing ideals who want to do similar things (such as the Michigan group wanting to start a violent uprising against the government by killing police).
Every side has its lunatic fringe. Anybody can claim association with any ideology they like. OWS is quite clearly not aligned with those radical folks any more than the NRA is aligned with the Michigan militia. Neither OWS nor the NRA or any other group should or needs to be responsible for them.